This is the first book on the life and work of Józef Tadeusz Milik (1922-2006), a great Biblical and Semitic scholar, one of the pillars of Qumran studies, once called "the fastest man with a fragment", the main decipherer and publisher of scrolls from the Judaean Desert in the 1950s and 1960s, one of the creators of the Essene hypothesis, and also a foremost Nabataean epigrapher. Some od his great contributions to Scrolls research still await publication.

Zdzisław J. Kapera presents a preliminary, but fully documented, account of Milik's family background and his scholarly career, focusing on his labours as a qumranologist, a Biblical archaeologist, and epigrapher of ancient Nabataea. He explains Milik's true role in the Third Battle of the Scrolls in the 1990s. Robert Feather publishes the transcriptions and comments on the contents of the tapes of his interviews with Milik in the scholar's last years. Many photographs from the private collections of the authors and from the archives of Milik's family are presented for the first time.